Is God in control of my life?

But without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. - Hebrews 11:6 (NKJV)

The following excerpts are from the book Finding God by Dr. Larry Crabb.

We can approach life in two ways: either live with confidence in an orderly world and try to manage things ourselves, or face life's tragedy and chaos and develop confidence in someone bigger than the chaos, someone whose goodness overwhelms tragedy, someone who cares about us.

Trust in an orderly world dies hard. We are terrified of being vulnerable. So we demand control over those things that matter most: our children, our important relationships, our health, our bank accounts. We angrily refuse to believe that life is more chaotic than predictable; we don't want to believe that the only way to survive with joy is to trust someone stronger than ourselves.

Responsible living, we assume, obligates God to keep blessing us.

When our strongest passion is to solve our problems, we look for a plan to follow rather than a person to trust.

Only when we lose hope in formulas that guarantee success will we develop true hope in a God who can be trusted when life makes no sense because one day he'll take us home.

Nothing matters more than developing a passion for Christ as we try to handle life's struggles responsibly and wisely. Our primary purpose is not to use God to solve our problems but to move through our problems toward finding God. We must develop a confidence in God that keeps us going even when hard problems continue. And that confidence grows only when confidence in our strategies to make life work is shattered. For that reason, we can welcome ongoing difficulties that make us question our ability to avoid or overcome them.

God reveals himself to people who want to know him more than they want anything else. As we struggle through the problems of life, the most important question we can ask is not, "How can I solve my problems?" but rather, "How can I develop a burning passion for knowing Christ that will overwhelm all other passions and reduce them to secondary concerns?"

God, I don't know how to come to you. I need to know you, sense your presence, and feel your love more than anything else. But I don't know what to do. Every path I follow leads back to me. I must find the way to you! I know you're all I have. But I don't know you well enough for you to be all I need. Please let me find you.

All the way my Savior leads me–
Oh, the fullness of His love!
Perfect rest to me is promised
In my Father's house above.
When my spirit, clothed immortal,
Wings its flight to realms of day,
This is my song through endless ages:
Jesus led me all the way. - Fanny Crosby

Be Encouraged to seek God and execute His plan for your life diligently!

-Jeffrey Thornton